FIRST OF THREE PARTS

If we would recall the history of the Christian faith, we would realize that there is no other doctrine that had caused numerous painful conflicts and controversies than the belief on the Triune God – God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our early Church Fathers struggled hard to articulate the Christian understanding of the Holy Trinity. There were so many conflicting views that somehow resulted to the convening of various ecumenical councils purposely to formulate creeds or statements of beliefs for the church to adopt.

There were two schools of thought which to a certain degree influenced the early church and extended even to the modern times. The first was the so called modalistic view. This view claims that there is only one God but in three modes or forms and periods of revelation. Sabellius advocated this concept which later on followed by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, and to a certain extent by Karl Barth. Although Barth’s concept is not entirely Sabellian, the fact that he rather use the term “modes” rather than “persons” shows that he is inclined to Sabellianism.

The second school of thought was that of the Cappadocian Fathers (two Gregories and Basil). Instead of saying “One in three Persons,” they would rather say, “Three Persons in One.” According to them, the Persons in the Trinity have distinct personal beings between them wherein there can be a social relationship. This concept is advocated by modern theologians (especially Anglicans, like Hodgson, Webb, and Lowry). They use analogies, like the sun, the ray, and the light, or the intelligence, the memory, and the will in the unity of a single mind.

These two schools of thought were different from each other in the sense that the first concerns with a Person in three modes of being, while the second talks about “three Persons in the highest kind of personal and social unity.” In deliberating our belief in the Trinity, we don’t intend to make a kind of synthesis on the aforementioned schools of thought. Rather, we would like to view it from the perspective of God’s revelatory and redemptive process. For we do believe that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity did not come out of a clear philosophical reflection but rather it emerged out of the rich experiences of people who encountered God in history.